Another attempt at Focus Stacking

[JohnRostron]

These are two flowers of Potentilla fruticosa. This plant nearly did not make it. It was a present from our students when we retired in 2007. Unfortunately it was delivered whilst we were on holiday and we thought that was it. Since then it has gone from strength to strength.

I took these two flowers and placed them on the window ledge so that they were illuminated from outside. I took 17 images, adjusting the focus (not the position). I did this by focussing on individual parts of the flowers to cover the entire gamut. The images were stacked in both Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker, but the final version was the Weighted Average one from Helicon. It was then cropped and sharpened.



The upper flower has some bright spots on it, but as far as I can tell, they are not actually blown out. Does this detract from the final image?

Any other comments are welcome.

John

[Shadowman]

Very nice.

[Mike Buckley]

I've never done focus stacking, so I'm impressed with your results. I especially like the areas that are back lit, a favorite style of lighting when photographing flowers and plants.

The upper flower has some bright spots on it, but as far as I can tell, they are not actually blown out. Does this detract from the final image?

Those bright spots are glare (a direct reflection of the light source). There is also some glare on the leaves. All of the glare combined is a very, very small part of the image. Even so, minimizing or eliminating the glare would have made the image even nicer than it already is because everywhere you remove glare you display more detail. A polarizer would have minimized the glare but its doubtful that all glare could have been eliminated using only natural light.

Consider adding a slight vignette, perhaps so slight that you wouldn't notice it until you remove it.

[Barbara Ponder]

Beautiful and the composition is wonderful. The only thing I might try if it were my shot would be to up the saturation on the flower just a tad and only because the leaves are so prominent that they tend to stand out a bit more than the blooms. After seeing it I might then decide I liked the original better but it never hurts to try

[chauncey]

Close examination will show some stacking errors...top flower center lower right and lower left edge,
bottom flower lower 3 petals have double edges.

Perhaps a restack will exhibit better results...sometimes it helps.

Mike is correct...fixing the hot-spots will help with definition.

[JohnRostron]

Thanks for all your comments.

Those bright spots are glare (a direct reflection of the light source). There is also some glare on the leaves. All of the glare combined is a very, very small part of the image. Even so, minimizing or eliminating the glare would have made the image even nicer than it already is because everywhere you remove glare you display more detail. A polarizer would have minimized the glare but its doubtful that all glare could have been eliminated using only natural light.

Consider adding a slight vignette, perhaps so slight that you wouldn't notice it until you remove it.

Thanks Mike. I did not spot the glare until after I had processed it. I had a polarizer handy, but did not think to use it. I'm not really into vignettes, but I will have a go.

The only thing I might try if it were my shot would be to up the saturation on the flower just a tad and only because the leaves are so prominent that they tend to stand out a bit more than the blooms.

Thanks Barbara. I did not tweak the colours any because I thought that the image accurately reflectes the real colours of the flowers. However I take your point about contrast with the leaves.

Close examination will show some stacking errors...top flower center lower right and lower left edge,
bottom flower lower 3 petals have double edges.

Thanks William. I had not spotted that. Out of the five stacks, only this one had the double edges! I had chosen this one because the background looked best. In the others there were some weird effects. I had not spotted any problems with the flower. I may try to blend the best flower with the best background.

I will experiment and report back.

John

[Geoff F]

The white areas in the top flower seem more like natural markings to me. It doesn't look over exposed when viewed at full size. Possibly clone over the spots?

When I get double images I often clone inwards over the unwanted edges so the software is forced to choose just the correct edge.

[IzzieK]

Geoff had beaten to it about cloning the hot spots, so if this is mine, I'd clone it gently at around 30-40% at first then add more a you go along. There is a lot of texture there you can use in the cloning process...I'd also eliminate the little extra branch at the bottom of the frame. I must admit, the flowers are pretty so I googled it to see if it can be grown here...and we can right here in Missouri too. It is a little bushy. Very nice shot...I like the backlighting.

[JohnRostron]

I thought that I would have another go at the same Potentilla flowers this morning. However, the upper one had withered, so I concentrated on the lower one.The setting was different, the background was the vertical blinds in my office so there was still the backlighting. The processing was the same. Helicon Focus Weighted Average gave the best result.



I also did the same with a Camelia flower that had just opened up.



I did up the saturation when bringing these into Photoshop. I also tried adding a vignette at the end, but the effect was to exacerbate the variations in the background which the focus stacking had already distorted. I have discovered that this distortion is a side effect of focus stacking (using any method or manufacturer) when the background is really out-of-focus.

John

[bnnrcn]

Very nice shots John I like #1 with natural colors and nice composition. I would clone the bright spots. I like #2 as is. I would sharpen #3 a bit more and reduce the saturation in greens a bit as the leaves look dominating the scene.